This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Monday, May 25, 2015

“Good Kill”, as the title of a film, sounds like an
oxymoron, and the effect of this indie film by Andrew Niccol, is rather
disturbing. ("Drones" is an alternate original title.) The obvious comparison will
be with “American Sniper” (January 16), where the political left (like Michael
Moore) called sniping “cowardly,” rather like "fighting with your fingernails." This film is much smaller, with only a few
characters and most of the action “simulated”, although set up in Morocco. Here, an Air Force Major Thomas Egan (Ethan
Hawke), relieved of flying sabre jets, works in a detachment in the desert near
Las Vegas playing video games, directing actual drone strikes against suspected
terrorists in Afghanistan and later Yemen.
It’s the ultimate “fight without fighting”. It’s not hard to predict that the ethical
problems will affect his marriage (wife January Jones) and family in a tract
house maybe ten miles from the Strip, totally treeless. It shouldn’t be hard to anticipate that
alcohol will affect him, too. The events
take place in 2010, and are supposed to be based on real history.

The complications set in when the detachment is contacted by
the CIA, directly from Langley, VA (where Egan thinks life is green and safe –
he doesn’t know Washington DC), and told to make kills under more generalized
circumstances (based on “signatures”).
The commander (Bruce Greenwood) is OK with this, but not so much the
other crew members, especially Airman Vera Suarez (Zoe Kravitz) chosen for the
unit because of her unusual IT and gaming skills. At this point, a movie reviewer has to say, I
don’t know if the CIA really does this, or how the chain of command really
works when the CIA interacts with the Armed Forces. But the president (Obama) has apparently
approved. Remember, this history occurs
before Osama bin Laden was taken out in 2011 (“Zero Dark Thirty”, Jan. 11,
2013).

The discussion leads to the rationalizations for taking out
civilians as “collateral damage” (again, the problem uncovered by Bradley
Chelsea Manning (CF blog, April 7, 2010).
The commander points to the civilians in the Twin Towers on 9/11. But Vera says that the Times Square plot
(which was foiled by sharp-eyed public and NYPD) was motivated specifically by
the fact that civilians in Muslim countries had been killed by Americans. (In fact, Jahar’s “manifesto” scribbled in a
boat said that.) This sounds rather personal.
I can recall, back in 1972, listening in on a (secular) far left wing
meeting in Newark, NJ where even individuals who benefited from the capitalist
system and were sheltered as salaried professionals “had it coming to them”. I certainly have some unfavorable karma on my
hands. I worked as a math instructor in
grad school and flunked some students, probably exposing them more to the
Vietnam draft. Then I was able to game
the system when I was eventually drafted to avoid combat. Put all this together, it isn’t pretty. Death itself eventually comes to every single
one of us, and is not controversial. But
some of us don’t have the right to ever be called victims (instead of
casualties) or be memorialized. We need
to get this right.

Eventually, Egan chokes on the job, leading to an ending
that I don’t completely buy.

The film has very limited theatrical release, but I saw it
at ArcLight in Bethesda MD, before a small audience Memorial Day. It’s also available
on Amazon Instant Play ($7). I think it helps to see this in a theater if
possible. The distributor is IFC and I suspect major studios didn’t want their
brands associated with this film. But Paramount (Vantage) is listed by YouTube as renting the
film. Voltage Pictures and Dune (usually
associated with big sci-fi and Universal) are listed as production companies.

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